Date: January, 1884

"The best symbol for [the brain] seems to be an electric conductor, the amount of whose charge at any one point is a function of the total charge elsewhere."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"But as the distribution of brain-tension shifts from one relative state of equilibrium to another, like the aurora borealis or the gyrations of a kaleidoscope, now rapid and now slow, is it likely that the brain's faithful psychic concomitant is heavier-footed than itself, that its rate of chang...

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"If so coarse a thing as a telephone-plate can be made to thrill for years and never reduplicate its inward condition, how much more must this be the case with the infinitely delicate brain?"

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"It is just this free water of consciousness that psychologists resolutely overlook."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows round it."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"The significance, the value, of the image is all in this halo or penumbra, that surrounds and escorts it, -- or rather that is fused into one with it and has become bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh; leaving it, it is true, an image of the same thing it was before, but making it a...

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"When very fresh, our minds carry an immense horizon with them."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"The present image shoots its perspective far before it, irradiating in advance the regions in which lie the thoughts as yet un-born."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"And in states of extreme brain-fag the horizon is narrowed almost to the passing word, -- the associative machinery, however, providing for the next word turning up in orderly sequence, until at last the tired thinker is led to some kind of a conclusion."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"I wish that space were here afforded to show what, in most cases of rapid thinking, the fringe or halo is with which each successive image is enveloped."

— James, William (1842-1910)